Denmark's forests: plantations store carbon, wild growth wins diversity

Denmark’s long-running effort to create forests on former farmland has revealed a striking trade-off between carbon storage and biodiversity. After 21 years, scientists compared naturally regenerated forests with areas deliberately planted with trees. Plantations accumulated tree biomass and captured carbon faster, while naturally colonised forests developed greater diversity and more varied ecological structures. The University of Copenhagen conducted a rare long-term comparison of two approaches to forest restoration and found why future reforestation projects may need to balance rapid carbon capture with biodiversity recovery and ecological complexity.What did scientists discover in Denmark after 21 yearsThe study ‘Passive versus active afforestation of agricultural land: Two decades of impacts on tree biomass and ecosystem carbon storage’ compared agricultural land that had been abandoned and allowed to regenerate naturally with areas that had been actively planted to create plantation forests. After approximately 21 years, clear differences had emerged between the two approaches. Plantation forests had accumulated substantially more tree biomass than naturally colonised forest...